if you’re a human and you have a brain, then you probably like using
your brain. And if you like using your brain, then you love having those
epiphany moments where your hair blows back and you go “Whoa” like
Keanu Reeves in The Matrix when he learns Kung Fu from a USB drive in
his neck.
I know it’s not what the cool kids like to do, but I like to read non-fiction. Lots of non-fiction. And my favorite moments reading non-fiction are when a book bitchslaps my brain and reconfigures my entire understanding of reality and my place within it.I love that. It’s like a mind orgasm.I get a lot of emails asking me for book recommendations. I never know what the hell to say because so many of the books that have influenced me have done so not because they’re so good or brilliant, but mostly because they addressed the issues I was going through at the time I was reading them.So instead of divulging what my favorite books are, I’ll leave you with something better: one of the most mind-fucking, reality-reshaping, Keanu Reeves “Whoa” inspiring books that I’ve ever read.
tWhat It’s About: Stumbling on Happiness is like the red-headed stepchild of happiness books. It doesn’t fit in with the rest because it basically tries to convince you that you don’t even know what the hell makes you happy in the first place, so why stress out about it?Gilbert is a famous Harvard psychologist who has a knack for coming up with zany experiments that show just how flawed and biased the human mind is. In the book, he shows you time and again that as humans, we inaccurately judge, among other things, what made us happy in the past, what will make us happy in the future, and even what is making us happy right at this moment.
In fact, decades of Gilbert’s research on happiness all points to the same unsettling fact: happiness has little to do with what happens to us in our lives, and more to do with how we end up choosing to see things.Gilbert’s theory is that we each have a “psychological immune system,” basically a bullshit generator where our minds explain away our past experiences, our future projections and our current situations in such a way that we always maintain a baseline level of mild happiness.1 And it’s when this “immune system” fails that we fall into prolonged depression and/or existential crises.
I know it’s not what the cool kids like to do, but I like to read non-fiction. Lots of non-fiction. And my favorite moments reading non-fiction are when a book bitchslaps my brain and reconfigures my entire understanding of reality and my place within it.I love that. It’s like a mind orgasm.I get a lot of emails asking me for book recommendations. I never know what the hell to say because so many of the books that have influenced me have done so not because they’re so good or brilliant, but mostly because they addressed the issues I was going through at the time I was reading them.So instead of divulging what my favorite books are, I’ll leave you with something better: one of the most mind-fucking, reality-reshaping, Keanu Reeves “Whoa” inspiring books that I’ve ever read.
tWhat It’s About: Stumbling on Happiness is like the red-headed stepchild of happiness books. It doesn’t fit in with the rest because it basically tries to convince you that you don’t even know what the hell makes you happy in the first place, so why stress out about it?Gilbert is a famous Harvard psychologist who has a knack for coming up with zany experiments that show just how flawed and biased the human mind is. In the book, he shows you time and again that as humans, we inaccurately judge, among other things, what made us happy in the past, what will make us happy in the future, and even what is making us happy right at this moment.
In fact, decades of Gilbert’s research on happiness all points to the same unsettling fact: happiness has little to do with what happens to us in our lives, and more to do with how we end up choosing to see things.Gilbert’s theory is that we each have a “psychological immune system,” basically a bullshit generator where our minds explain away our past experiences, our future projections and our current situations in such a way that we always maintain a baseline level of mild happiness.1 And it’s when this “immune system” fails that we fall into prolonged depression and/or existential crises.
